Jennifer Orr

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New Classroom, New Thoughts

Disclaimer: The room is not unpacked. That won’t happen until late July/early August. There are extra bookcases (sitting on top of things) that I may or may not decide to keep and use (most likely not). So it is still a mess but this is a chance for me to think through why I have chosen to place things where I have placed them.

This new year will be my fifth at my current school and my fourth classroom space. I spent sixteen years at my previous school and was only in four different classroom spaces. It was lovely to have the opportunity to tweak each year to make our space work better for us rather than having to completely rethink. (That said, the reasons I’ve changed classrooms here have all made sense to me, even as it has challenged my thinking about our space.)

Our smartboard is mounted on the wall so it determined where our carpet would go. For the first time ever I have a projector that is mounted on the ceiling (thanks to the teacher who was previously in this room) so I don’t have to make space for that. I do have a space planned for our document camera (the most common reason I use the projector) on the bookshelf to the right of the smartboard. We’ll see how that set up works for us this year. The shelves will also serve as a great place to store our small whiteboards, markers, and erasers to keep them easily accessible for use when we’re working together. Storing them in a way that makes them quick and easy for us to grab has been a challenge for me.

Those colorful book displays have never been so carefully placed before. Usually I’m searching for a place to put them once everything else is ready. I’m excited to have them right by our group gathering space. I use these to display books we’ve already read.

Here you can see one of the shelves from last year (it is nestled in the corner in the photos above). This one displayed the ongoing read alouds from our year, the books that took multiple days and weeks to read together.

These others display picture books, fiction and nonfiction, that we’ve read together. Having all of these book displays right where we gather for focus lessons, read alouds, discussions, etc. will be wonderful. Any one of us can grab a book if we are referencing it, something that happens often and that I am happy to do what I can to encourage.